i am looking for recipes sturdy enough to carve, support fondant and a heavy chocolate wine bottle. made it once with a scratch pound cake. it looked good but was dry and tasteless. would love to try champagne cake, but afraid it is too soft (have never made it). any sturdy cake suggestions?

There's no reason why a pound cake should be dry, unless it was overbaked or left out without being iced for too long. Pound cakes are great for carving and can stand up to the weight of fondant. You might want to try out different pound cakes before you make the actual one you'll use (although I get that this may not be an option!). I use the 1-2-3-4 cake, which is a pound cake variation, very often. As soon as I can take my cakes out of the pan, I wrap each layer in a couple of layers of plastic wrap and freeze them at least overnight. For some reason this helps retain moisture in the cake.

overbaking may have been the problem. the "toothpick test" kept coming out with batter sticking to it, so I kept extending the baking time until it was clean. may have gone overboard. perhaps i should try again.

I read on another thread in the last couple of months that if your toothpick comes out totally clean, your cake is overbaked. It should just be baked to the point (if I remember correctly) just to the point when what sticks to the toothpick is more crumbly than batter-y. The thing is, the cake keeps cooking after you take it out and while it gets cool enough that you can get it out of the pan. I'd say take another stab at it, and best of luck!

thanks for the tip. getting the baking just right is often the hardest part of this process for me. tried another pound cake recipe yesterday with similar result, wil try that toothpick suggestion.

Yes, while they're still warm. I got the feeling my cakes were losing a lot of moisture as they cooled down, so I decided to experiment with freezing them while still quite warm. My cake decorating teacher was appalled, but they really are more moist that way!